Курсовая работа: The system of English verbs

Hesternal past tense: yesterday or early, but not remote

Hodiernal past tense: sometime earlier today

Immediate past tense: very recent past tense, e.g. in the last minute or two

Recent past tense: in the last few days/weeks/months (exact definition varies)

Remote past tense: more than a few days/weeks/months ago (exact definition varies)

Nonrecent past tense: not recent past tense, contrasting with recent past tense

Nonremote past tense: not remote past tense, contrasting with remote past tense

Prehesternal past tense: before hesternal past tense

Prehodiernal past tense: before hodiernal past tense

Preterit: past tense not marked for aspect or modality

Present tense

Still tense: indicates a situation held to be the case, at or immediately before the utterance

Absolute-relative tenses

future perfect tense: will have completed by some time in the future, will occur before some time in the future

Future-in-future tense: at some time in the future, will still be in the future

Future-in-past tense: at some time in the future, will be in the past

Future-perfect-in-past tense: will be completed by some time which is in the future of some time in the past, eg., Sally went to work; by the time she should be home, the burglary would have been completed.

Past perfect tense: at some time in the past, was already in the past

Relative tenses

Relative future tense: is in the future of some unspecified time

Relative nonfuture tense: is in the past or present of some unspecified time

Relative nonpast tense: is in the present or future of some unspecified time

Relative past tense: is in the past of some unspecified time

Relative present tense: is in the present of some unspecified time

2.6 Palmer’s and mind’s discussion on English modality

Historically in language descriptions, the grammatical terms «modality» and «mood» have lacked truly definitive categories of meaning. For that reason, linguistic dictionaries have often treated them as synonyms, cross referencing their entries and in some cases, describing how different theories or authors have used the terms.

In this book, Palmer treats «modality» as a valid cross-language grammatical category that, along with tense and aspect, is notionally concerned with the event or situation that is reported by an utterance. However, he says that unlike tense and aspect which are categories associated with the nature of the event itself, modality is concerned with the status of the proposition that describes the event.

Palmer then goes on to define two basic distinctions in how languages deal with the category of modality: modal systems and mood. He believes that many languages may be characterized by one or the other. He also claims that typology related to modality cannot be undertaken on purely formal grounds because of the complexity of cross-linguistic differences in the grammatical means used to express what he terms «notional» categories. This claim is substantiated by the great variety of forms and structures evident in the data from 122 languages that he uses to illustrate the expression of modality.

Palmer distinguishes two sorts of modality: propositional modality and event modality. These notional systems express the following categories: